Movie Heroines Who Could Break You!

Forget Jolie, Beckinsdale, Jovovich and those glamour-puss “action stars”—we’ve put together a list of 10 heroines who could swab the floor with your candy ass.

Believability. It’s a key commodity for an action star. No amount of kinetic, fast-twitch, shuffle-cut editing can make an actor look like they know what the hell they’re doing in a fight—as anyone who’s watched John Stamos throw a volley of noodle-wristed, gas-armed whiffles during his fight scenes in the 1991 biker pic Born to Ride can attest. (Sorry, Uncle Jesse. You just didn’t have the juice.)

But plenty of guys do. Tom Hardy’s got it. Early Eric Bana had it. Steven Seagal sorta had it, until he got all roly-poly and potato-faced and took to wearing embroidered Mandarin waistcoats.

And the same goes for female action movie stars. Some got it, some don’t. (Some—Scarlett Johansson, Halle Berry—just look agreeable in tight patent leather, so we forgive them.)

But here, a list of 10 female action babes who most definitely bring it. Read this...and weep for your weakness.

No amount of kinetic, fast-twitch, shuffle-cut editing can make an actor look like they know what the hell they’re doing in a fight—as anyone who’s watched John Stamos throw a volley of noodle-wristed, gas-armed whiffles during his fight scenes in the 1991 biker pic Born to Ride can attest. (Sorry, Uncle Jesse. You just didn’t have the juice.)

But plenty of guys do. Tom Hardy’s got it. Early Eric Bana had it. Steven Segal sorta had it, until he got all roly-poly and potato-faced and took to wearing embroidered Mandarin waistcoats.

And the same goes for female action stars. Some got it, some don’t. (Some—Scarlett Johansson, Halle Berry—just look agreeable in tight patent leather, so we forgive them.)

But here, a list of 10 female stars who most definitely bring it. Read this...and weep for your weakness.

Geena Davis

That’s right—Thelma, from that riot about two daffy broads whose faulty GPS causes their car to sail off a cliff. Why not? She’s tall and freakishly athletic and almost qualified for the Olympics in archery, for Pete’s sake! And in The Long Kiss Goodnight she brings her formidable physical talents to bear as amnesiac assassin Elizabeth Baltimore. Midway through the film she shears off her hair, dyes it platinum blonde and starts whipping serious ass.

Tamara Dobson

If her name is unfamiliar, you need to bone up on the “blackspoitation” film movement of the 70s. While it introduced us to a rogue’s gallery of surly anti-authoritarians like John Shaft, the movement also gifted us with actresses such as Pam Grie —who embodied tough characters with names like “Foxy Brown” and “Coffy.”

But even Grier (a near-miss on this list) takes a backseat to Dobson, a statuesque powerhouse best known for her embodiment of the titular character in 1973’s Cleopatra Jones. Dig on the film’s tagline: She’s 6 feet 2” of Dynamite … and the Hottest Super Agent Ever! Dobson lives up to the hype, kicking nine kinds of ass all over the screen.

Sigourney Weaver

The alpha and omega. No list of filmic badasses is complete without Alien’s Ripley. She’s tough-as-nails, durable, nearly impervious to sulfuric alien drool. Could Ripley beat you up? Ripley would look at you standing there, squared up to fight, and say: “Son, please.” If you tried to snatch the pebble from her palm she’d say: “You want it, grasshopper? Here, then—have it!” and stuff it up your nose, then punch you down a flight of stairs, steal your wallet and commit random, free-spirited acts of identity theft just for kicks. She’s Ripley, you’re not. Deal with it.

Uma Thurman

Sure, she showed inklings: Poison Ivy in Batman & Robin, Emma Peel in The Avengers. But for most viewers Thurman was no more than a wispy, gawky (if sexily so) romantic leading lady. She was Kate Hudson before Kate Hudson was a thing.

Then came Tarantino’s Kill Bill—say what you want about the man, but Tarantino always puts strong female characters on screen (see also: Pam Grier in Jackie Brown; Patricia Arquette in True Romance). Even while paralyzed from the neck-down, Thurman’s Beatrix Kiddo exuded an air of coiled menace. She could ruin you and not think much about it.

Grace Jones

The 70s-era disco queen’s physical gifts were showcased most memorably as psychotic henchwoman May Day in A View to a Kill, the 14th installment of the James Bond franchise. Who can forget the scene where she locks Roger Moore’s neck between her legs while he’s blurting out some hammy off-color quip (“This is a tight squeeze—urk!”)? She cinched her thighs so tightly that she nearly popped his over-tanned head off like a dandelion.

Rachel McLish

The pleasantly-muscled IFBB Ms. Olympia champ went on to have a sterling film career in such cinema verite fare as Raven Hawk: a socially-conscious film, produced by Italians, about a Native American woman (McLish, who is Spanish) wreaking revenge on greedy oilmen who framed her for murder because, yeah, they’re greedy oilmen.

Highs: Mucho exploding cars and hilarious 90s-era cell phones, loving CUs of McLish’s striated back muscles, goons getting punched off a speedboat. Lows: No fight scene between a raven and a hawk, as title seems to imply—obviously, a huge disappointment for bird-fight enthusiasts.

Sybil Danning

One of the original B-movie queens, Danning’s fetching physique led to a string of exploitation film roles in which she bared said physique on the regular—she’s shown here displaying her, er, best weapons in 1983’s Hercules. But most guys who came of age in the 80s and early 90s will remember her as Stirba, the wanton, murderous werewolf in the 1985 sequel-in-name-only to The Howling, titled: Howling II: Stirba, Werewolf Bitch. Also starring Chistopher Lee, the movie showcased Danning kicking ass in revealing, S&M-style fashions. It also features the best closing credits ever, wherein Danning rips her top off eighteen times. Eighteen! Bless her heart. But don’t leer, fellows; she’ll kill you.

Cynthia Rothrock

Is she The Perfect Weapon? No, that would be Jeff Speakman, but Rothrock is pretty awesome. The former karate champion made a career transition to a B-movie grinder in the 80s, and she’s been churning out chop-socky flicks ever since—facing a revolving carousel of D-list villains such as melty-faced character actor Billy Drago (the sonofabitch who shot Sean Connery in The Untouchables) and Brain Johnson (aka: The Night Slasher, Sly Stallone’s nemesis in Cobra). Rothrock’s still grinding them out; upcoming projects include Rogue Space: The Adventures of Saber Raine and the intriguingly-titled Santa’s Summer House.

Linda Hamilton

Were we to erect a Mount Rushmore of female action stars, Hamilton would be up there (with Weaver, Rothrock and … Thurman?) for her physical transformation for Terminator 2. You remember how De Niro got all ripped then all flabby for Raging Bull? Or how Edward Norton got jacked for American History X? Hamilton’s transformation exceeded both of those.

Before T2, it was her lot to be saved by beasts: She was King Kong’s love object in King Kong Lives, and the Beauty to Ron Perlman’s Beast in TV’s Beauty and the Beast. In T2, Hamilton was a beast; the first time you see her onscreen—slabbed in muscle, busting out chinups in the loonybin—now that was a shock that could knock us on our ass alone.

Zoe Bell

Bell is an Australian import who got her start as a stuntwoman — she was the one making Uma Thurman look good in Kill Bill, as well as Lucy Lawless in Xena: The Warrior Princess. Her first acting role came in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, where she spends a great deal of it on the hood of a car driven by Kurt Russell’s character, Stuntman Mike, blitzing down the road at 60mph. Just look at her—you know, somewhere deep inside, that she could squash you like a bug.